I picked up a Lumia 920 on Friday but I do not have cell service yet. I am moving from Sprint to Straight Talk and am waiting for the SIM to show up in the mail. I tried to use the phone just with wifi, but it appears that many things can't be done without a cell data connection? I was not able to add a Microsoft account with a SIM, which I did using a co-workers for a few minutes. After I added the account, I was trying to check out the music store but again, it errored with no data connection because I did not have the SIM in there, but I was on wifi.

Is this normal with Windows Phone 8? Is there any way around it? This is a pretty big deal to me as I am not always in the best spots with cellular coverage but have wifi, or when I travel out of the country I won't always have a local SIM such as transferring between airports.

To set up Windows Phone for the first time, you need a SIM with functioning data service (GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE, 1xRTT or EVDO to be precise).

Interesting how that is the case. Android doesn't have this requirement.

It does appear that that the music I was having after I added my Microsoft account was fixed. I opened up and downloaded a game from the store, it had me agree to some terms, and after that music and such started working. I am hoping that my SIM shows up tomorrow, but it would have been nice to be able to play with everything else this past weekend.

Any phone activated with a live ID will get added to their account. Go to windowsphone.com and you can download apps from the website to your phone. It's a great way to surf apps without using data if you are around a PC. You can also manage your phone, lock it, check its location... etc.

I was just saying logging into your ID with his sim, it would be funny if he had complete control of your phone. But it's not possible because it's based on your windows ID.

I was trying to be funny but obviously you didn't know about this lol. No worries.

Any phone activated with a live ID will get added to their account. Go to windowsphone.com and you can download apps from the website to your phone. It's a great way to surf apps without using data if you are around a PC. You can also manage your phone, lock it, check its location... etc.

I was just saying logging into your ID with his sim, it would be funny if he had complete control of your phone. But it's not possible because it's based on your windows ID.

I was trying to be funny but obviously you didn't know about this lol. No worries.

Gotcha. Wasn't sure if it was that or maybe you were drunk or something. :)